Bottles of various sorts have long been provided with stoppers which seal the bottle when a liquid contained therein is not to be dispensed. Many such stoppers, as, for example, conventional bottle caps, are not replaceable and cannot be reinstalled on the bottle when the contents of the bottle have only been partially consumed. Other stoppers are simply screw on caps which must be totally separated from the bottle when its contents are to be dispensed. Because such stoppers are completely separated from the bottle when the bottle is opened, not infrequently the stopper may be lost making it impossible to reseal the bottle or requiring resort to some other type of closure device. Moreover, because extensive manipulation of the cap is required, opening and closing the bottle is not as convenient as might otherwise be the case.
To avoid these and other problems, a variety of dispensing stoppers have been suggested. These types of stoppers are typically removably fixed to the bottle to be sealed and require only the application of an opening force to a lever or the like to cause the stopper to unseal the bottle when its contents are to be dispensed. While these stoppers work well in the sense that they do not require extensive manipulation to seal or unseal the bottle, they are not without drawbacks of their own. Typical of these stoppers is an internal conduit that is in fluid communication with the interior of the bottle as well as the exterior of the bottle as, for example, at a pouring spout. When these stoppers are placed in the environment where they are required to be reused, it is necessary to thoroughly clean the interior conduit to assure that liquid passing therethrough in a prior use has not left any residue. Such residue, depending upon the contents of the bottle, could provide a source for the growth of bacteria, or result in the contents of the bottle being dispensed through the stopper in a subsequent use having a flavor imparted thereto that may be undesirable as a result of it being of a different liquid than that being dispensed or simply as a result of degradation occurring to the residue while in the internal conduit.
In any case, careful washing of the stopper may be required to assure that there is no residue remaining within the internal conduit from previous pours in such stopper. And because the conduit is internal to the stopper, and will typically be provided with some sort of valving or flow control device, the opportunity for the accumulation of residue from liquids being dispensed is significant.
The present invention is directed to overcoming one or more of the above problems.